Balance of Power

SEVENTEEN

Adolfo Alcazar was exhausted when he got into bed.

He slept on a small, flat mattress in a corner of the one-room apartment. The sagging mattress rested on a metal frame not far from the stove; still lit and glowing dimly, the stove provided the only light in the small room. The old frame was rusted from the sea breeze that blew through the window.

He smiled. The mattress was the same one he’d bounced on when he was a boy. It occurred to him now as he lay down, naked, how pure an act that had been — to bounce on the bed. It was an activity that didn’t give a damn about what went before or what was coming next. It was a complete, self-contained expression of freedom and joy.

He remembered having to stop when he grew a little and made more noise. The people who lived downstairs complained. It had been a harsh thing for a child to learn, that he wasn’t free. And that was only the first lesson in his lack of liberty. Until he met the General his life had been a series of surrenders and retreats that made others happy or rich. As he lay down in bed, in the bed that used to make him feel so free, Adolfo felt a taste of what it was like to be free again. Free of government regulations that told him what he could fish and fishing magnates who told him when and where he could fish so as not to interfere with them and recreational boats clogging his harbor because the boating industry had more influence in Madrid than small fishermen had. With the help of the General he would be free to make a living in a nation that once again belonged to the people. To his people. The General didn’t care if you were Castilian like Adolfo or Catalonian or Basque or Galician or whatever. If you wanted to be free from Madrid, if you wanted self-rule for your people, you followed him. If you wanted to maintain the status quo or profit from the sweat of others, you were removed.

Lying on his back, staring into the darkness, Adolfo finally shut his eyes. He had done well today. The General would be pleased.

The door flew inward with a crack, startling him. Four men rushed toward him before he was fully awake. As one man shut the door the others pulled him facedown on the floor. His arms were stretched out from his sides and his palms were pressed down on the floor. They pinned him in that position with their knees and with their hands.

“Are you Adolfo Alcazar?” one of them demanded.

Adolfo said nothing. He was looking toward the left, toward the stove. He felt the middle finger of his right hand pulled back slowly until it broke with a single, flashing snap.

“Yes!” he shrieked. Then he moaned.

“You killed many men today,” one of them said.

Adolfo’s head was cloudy with thought but clear with pain. Before he could clear his mind his right index finger was pulled back and broken. He screamed as the pain raced up to his elbow and back again. He felt something — one of his socks — stuffed roughly between his teeth.

“You killed the head of our familia,” the man said.

His ring finger was drawn back until it popped. They released it and the three broken fingers sat side by side, bloated but numb. His hand was trembling as they twisted back the pinky finger. It flopped down, shattered like the others. Then he felt something hard and cold on his thumb. His head was forced around and he saw a crowbar, held vertically. The curved end was resting on top of his thumb. It was raised straight up and brought down hard. The thumb burned as the skin ripped and bone cracked. The crowbar went up again and then came down, this time on the wrist joint. It came down once in the center, once on the left, and once on the right. Each blow sent a swift, hot wave of pain up his arm to his shoulder and along his neck. When it passed there was only a deep throbbing weight on his forearm, like an anvil was sitting on it.

“Your hand will never again be raised against us,” the man said.

With that, they released Adolfo and turned him over. He tried to control his right arm but it flopped as though it were asleep. He caught a glimpse of blood as it trickled down his forearm. He didn’t feel it until it reached his elbow.

Struggling weakly, Adolfo was dragged several feet and then they pinned him again, on his back. The sock was still jammed in his mouth. It was dark and tears of pain filled Adolfo’s eyes. He could not see the faces of his captors. He fought to get free again but his efforts were like the wriggling of a fish in one of his nets.

“Save your strength,” the man said. “You’re not going anywhere — except to hell if you don’t tell us what we wish to know. Do you understand?”

Adolfo looked up at the dark face. He tried to spit out the sock, not to respond but in defiance.

The man grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled Adolfo’s head toward him. “Do you understand?”

Adolfo didn’t answer. A moment later the man nodded to someone kneeling on Adolfo’s knee. A moment after that he felt his right leg being lifted. Every part of him screamed as his bare foot was placed into the open grate of the oven, above the dying fire. He came violently alive and screamed into the sock and tried to withdraw. But the men held him there.

“Do you understand?” the man above him repeated calmly.

Adolfo nodded vigorously as he kicked and rocked and tried to get away. The man turned toward the others. They withdrew his foot and set it back down. The flesh screamed and he was viciously awake. But the pain focused his mind. He was panting through the sock and squirming under their grip. He looked up wide-eyed at the one dark face.

The man removed the sock and held it over Adolfo’s mouth. “Who do you work with?” he asked. Adolfo was panting heavily. His foot felt icy-hot, like ocean spray on a bad sunburn.

He felt them lift up the other leg.

“Who do you work with?”

“A general,” Adolfo gasped. “An Air Force general named Pintos. Roberto Pintos.”

“Where is he stationed?”

Adolfo didn’t answer. It was time to wait a little before lying again. The one time Adolfo had met General Amadori — the real general, not this imaginary General Pintos — was at a meeting of nonmilitary aides in an airplane hangar in Burgos. There, the General had warned everyone that this day might come. That they might be found out and interrogated. He said that once the war had begun, it wouldn’t matter what they said. But he cautioned them to hold out as long as possible for their own sense of honor.

Most men can be broken, he had said. The trick is not to be broken without confusing the enemy. If you are captured, there is nothing you can do to prevent being tortured. What you must do is talk. Tell the enemy lies. Keep on lying as long as you can. Lie until the enemy cannot tell the true from the false, the good information from the bad.

“Where is General Pintos stationed?” the torturer continued.

Adolfo shook his head. The sock was crushed back into his mouth and he felt himself jerked forward on the left and his foot placed into the ferocious heat. His struggles were as frantic as before. But while the pain was awful and it drew sweat from every inch of him, there was one thing comforting. The pain in his right foot was not so blinding anymore. He held on to that thought until the pain in his left foot tore it from his mind and sent sheets of anguish up and down his entire body. Except for his right hand. He felt nothing there. Nothing at all, not even pain — and that scared him. It made him feel a little dead.

They pulled his foot from the fire and dropped it back down. They pinned him again. The dark face came close to him again. The tears in Adolfo’s eyes smeared the black shape.

“Where is Pintos stationed?”

The sheets of pain had become a constant burning, but it was less intense. Adolfo knew that he could hold out until the next round — whatever the next round was. He was proud of himself. In a strange way he felt free. Free to suffer, free to resist. But it was his choice.

“Ba — Barcelona,” Adolfo moaned.

“You’re lying,” the torturer replied.

“N-no!”

“How old is he?”

“F-fifty-two.”

“What color is his hair?”

“Brown.”

The torturer smacked Adolfo. “You’re lying!”

Adolfo looked up at the face and shook his head once. “No. I speak… the truth.”

The face hovered a moment longer and then the sock was shoved back down. Adolfo felt himself tugged to the side. They grabbed his left arm and held it and pushed his hand into the opening.

He screamed in his throat as his fingers curled into a fist and fought to get out of the heat. And then everything went dark.

He woke bent over the sink with water rushing down over the back of his head. He coughed, vomited up the stew, then was dropped onto his back on the floor. Every patch of flesh on his feet and left hand throbbed hotly.

The sock was thrust back in his mouth.

“You’re strong,” the dark face said to him. “But we have time and I have experience. The first things men always give up are lies. We will continue until we have the truth.” He bent closer. “Will you tell us who you work with?”

Adolfo was trembling. The parts of him that weren’t burned or broken were chilly. It seemed very odd to feel something so trivial as that. He shook his head twice.

This time he wasn’t moved. The sock was pushed harder into his mouth and held there. One of the crowbars was raised over Adolfo’s right shoulder and was swung down hard. The bone broke audibly under the blow. He cried into the sock. The crowbar was raised again and struck lower, between the shoulder and elbow. Another bone broke. He cried again. Each blow brought a burst of agony and a yelp and then numbness.

Each scream was a rent in his will. The pain was just pain but every scream was a surrender. And as he surrendered those pieces of his fighting spirit, he had less to draw on.

“When you talk, the beating will stop,” the voice said.

Someone started working on his left side and he jumped and howled with each strike. He felt the wall of resistance crumble faster now. And then something surprising happened. He didn’t feel like himself anymore. His body was broken; that wasn’t him. His will was shattered; that wasn’t him. He was someone else. And that someone else wanted to talk.

He said something into the sock. The face came down and the beating stopped. The sock was removed.

“Am… Am…”

“What?” said the dark face.

“Ama… dori.”

“Amadori?” the face repeated.

“Am… a… do… ri.” Each syllable rode out on a breath. Adolfo couldn’t help himself. He just wanted the pain to stop. “Gen… er… al.”

“General Amadori,” the face said. “That’s who you work with?”

Adolfo nodded.

“Is there anyone else?”

Adolfo shook his head once. He shut his eyes.

“Do you believe him?” someone asked.

“Look at him,” someone replied. “He hasn’t got the wits left to lie.”

Adolfo felt himself being released. It felt good just to lie there on his back. He opened his eyes and stared up at the dark figures gathered around him.

“What do we do with him?” one man asked.

“He killed Señor Ramirez,” said another. “He dies. Slowly.”

That was the final word on the matter — not by concensus but because the man swung his crowbar down on Adolfo’s throat. The fisherman’s head jerked up and then fell back as his larynx shattered; his dead arms didn’t move. Then he lay there tasting blood and wheezing. He was able to draw just enough breath to remain conscious but not enough to satisfy his lungs.

The pain settled into a steady roar, which helped to keep him conscious. He was Adolfo Alcazar again but the agony in his limbs and in his throat made it difficult to string thoughts together. He couldn’t decide whether he’d acted courageously by holding out for as long as he did or cowardly for having succumbed at all. Flashes of thought said yes he’d been brave, then no he hadn’t. And then it didn’t seem to matter as he shivered and the pain suddenly attacked him. Sometimes it came in like the tide, engulfing him. Sometimes it lapped at him like tiny breakers out at sea. The small swells he could manage. But the big ones tortured him. God, how they made him shake all over.

He had no idea how long he lay there and whether his eyes had been open or closed. But suddenly his eyes were open and the room was brighter and there was a figure bending beside him.

It was his brother, Berto.

Norberto was weeping and saying something. He was making signs over his face. Adolfo tried to raise his arm but it didn’t respond. He tried to speak—

“A… ma… do… ri.”

Did Norberto hear? Did he understand?

“City… chur… church.”

“Adolfo, lie quietly,” Norberto said. “I’ve telephoned for a doctor — oh, God.”

Norberto continued saying a prayer.

“ Warn… Gen… er… al… they… know.…”

Norberto laid a hand on his brother’s lips to silence them. Adolfo smiled weakly. His brother’s hand was soft and loving. The pain seemed to subside.

And then his head rolled to the side and his eyes shut and the pain was gone.